It sounds like a low-budget thriller. A vicar and his wife are hurriedly retrieving belongings from an old rectory when a face appears at a window. Other figures are spotted outside and a sinister whirring noise, which could be a drill, is heard.

Actually, it was a bizarre twist in a long-running battle in a group of Worcestershire parishes that a union is citing as an example of the "workplace bullying" now affecting some clergy.

The Rev Mark Sharpe left the picturesque parish of Teme Valley South just before the new year, claiming he and his family had suffered four years of harassment, without support from church leaders.

That latest episode came when Sharpe and his wife were "surrounded" at the rectory. The Sharpes allege they heard one man saying "we've got him now", and claim the whirring noise was a drill – the group trying to enter. "We genuinely feared for our safety. We were surrounded," said Sharpe. Police said they "successfully dealt with a breach of the peace" at the rectory at the time.

Last week Unite launched a hotline for clergy facing similar "workplace bullying". The union claimed that churches did not do enough to protect clergy, and flagged up Teme Valley South as an example.

Since opening the hotline, the union said, "scores" of clergy, mainly from the Church of England, had contacted it.

Sharpe believes he fell out of favour with some parishioners after he had to sort out irregularities in the way two ­parishes in his benefice were run. Sharpe says his dog was poisoned and his family verbally abused, his car was smeared with excrement and the tyres slashed, people tampered with his post, heating oil was stolen and phone lines were cut. "It was a living hell and it's shaken my faith."

He claims he got little support from his superiors and the rectory was allowed to crumble around him as "punishment", allegations the diocese strongly denies. He retired aged 42 because of ill health.

A war of words has since arisen between the diocese of Worcester and Sharpe's backers. Some claim a number of his ­predecessors also left suffering stress.

The diocese, though, published a string of eulogies about the area by other former clergymen. The bishop of Dudley, David Walker, said of Sharpe's experience that two churchwardens had gone to his rectory, believing an "intruder" was about. The diocese denies that the sound the Sharpes heard was a drill. But Rachael Maskell, a Unite official, said: "This is a toxic parish with a 40-year history of clergy leaving abruptly or in broken health." She believes that, with power resting with parishioners and those high in the church, clergy are left vulnerable in the middle.